- Among its many impressive accomplishments, Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru depicts what is surely the world's most frustrating bureaucratic run-around. Well-meaning citizens of Tokyo approach the government, hoping to convert a filthy cesspool into a children's park. The Parks Department says it's a public health issue. The Health Department notes that this project involves sanitation. The Sanitation Department doesn't deal with infectious disease. Next stops: The Disease Department, The Pest Control Department, The Sewage Department, and so on. They eventually arrive at the office of the deputy mayor (Nobuo Nakamura), who "truly appreciates" when constituents bring up such complaints. He redirects them to the Public Affairs desk, but the people there claim it isn't their job, either.
- In this pantheon of ineffectual bureaucrats, the head of Public Affairs, Mr. Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), may be the biggest paper-pusher of them all. Referred to coyly as "The Mummy" by his spunky subordinate Toyo (Miki Odagiri), Watanabe shuffles in every day to sit quietly at his desk, stamping papers and frowning at the world. Surrounding him is a towering wall of paperwork that presumably dates back to the imperial era. To say that he gets nothing done presupposes that his goal in life is something other than sitting at a desk whiling away the hours. But that was before Watanabe got his recent bad news. It turns out he's dying of stomach cancer and has only a few months to live.
- His son (Nobuo Kaneko) and daughter-in-law (Kyoko Seki) first suspect something is amiss when they stumble upon Watanabe sitting at home in the dark. They're less worried about his health than whether or not he overheard them gossipping about their inheritances. His coworkers (Kamatari Fujiwara, Minosuke Yamada) are even more astonished when he calls in sick to work, although their concerns revolve primarily around his eventual successor. In the meantime, Watanabe seeks to find some meaning in his life at this late hour. Will a wild night in Tokyo with a rudderless novelist (Yunosuke Ito) help him to appreciate living? Perhaps he just needs to borrow a little of Toyo's joie de vivre? Or maybe he can transform himself into the one bureaucrat who actually gets things done.
- While Watanabe's life makes for an interesting enough tale, the big narrative surprise arrives when the increasingly sympathetic protagonist dies two-thirds of the way through the film. The remainder of his story is told by mourners at his funeral who debate both whether he knew he was sick and why he suddenly became so inspired to build a park. As you might imagine, the film's flashbacks show how closely those two notions are linked, even if Watanabe's family and the deputy mayor never quite clue in. In fact, the film is so expert in its employment of instructive flashbacks that this and Rashomon should be mandatory viewing for those modern film and TV directors who thoughtlessly deploy in medias res and flashbacks as lazy storytelling devices. Narrative stylings aside, the film's iconic image of a grinning Watanabe on a swing is a final reminder that there are few more invigorating examinations of mortality than Ikiru. It's a rare film whose happiest moment occurs during the funeral of its main character and which truly inspires the audience to improve their own lives before it's too late.
